Know more how to manage projects to your agency using this guide

Acquire more clients for your agency

Introduction

Managing projects for SEO agencies can be a tough job. If you are a fresh agency and it is your first projects, it is naturally going to be tough. If, on the other hand, you are experienced enough and handle more than one project at a time, it can still be a tough time handling multiple projects. You have websites like Tribe Local ready to help you in these efforts. These tips on how to handle SEO projects better will be useful to you in many ways.

A continuous job:

SEO is a vastly changing field. You need to update your knowledge with the latest happenings in the industry. In this way, you will be in a better position to handle the SEO activities of your customers. SEO is an ever-learning process. You learn something new every day. You should have an open mind to accept the changes and adapt to them.

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How you can do better:

You have done all the hard work of developing your agency and scouting for clients. You are now running a successful SEO agency. Managing it has become tough because of the heavy workload and the variety of clients you handle. You should do well to imbibe these tips that can help organize your efforts better.

1. Documentation of your efforts can make it easy

Documenting your strategy can prove useful to you because you will not miss any step. It is also useful under circumstances where you are absent and someone else has to run the show. Having it documented is helpful to all. There are various tools available for documenting your strategy and targets. You have MS Word and Google Docs as two good tools in this aspect.

Of the two, Google Docs should be preferable because it is more collaborative than MS Word. Your team members can access these documents from Google Drive and edit them if necessary. Of course, you can add the protective passwords or use 2-way authentication to discourage unauthorized access. It is also easy to track built links with Google Docs. Centralizing these links allows you to present your report to the client easily. As the person in charge of the project, you can always add keywords and mapped pages to enable your team to understand the priorities for the particular month.

You can also make use of Google calendar to keep track of your timelines and deadlines. You will thus be able to manage your projects better.

2. Deliver your reports to your clients on time regularly

Google Docs does help you to document your efforts. At the same time MS Word is also an equally useful tool. You will be able to record your reports and share it with your client in a PDF format. Hence, MS Word is more beneficial when it comes to deliverance.

You can protect the PDF document with a password to avoid unnecessary leakage of the reports to unauthorized persons. MS Office 2010 is one of the most customer-friendly tools in the sense that you can do a variety of jobs using these applications.

The MS Excel spreadsheets help you to keep track of the rankings and other metrics. You would need to update this data almost on a monthly basis when you carry out the monthly audits. Spreadsheets are also very useful when you note down details during a telephonic call with your client. In case the data includes numbers and calculations, the MS Excel spreadsheets are extremely useful.

These are simple tools, but very useful under various circumstances. They should form part of every SEO agency.

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3. Analyze your projects with the help of a Heat Map

Any SEO agency has to analyze the status of the projects at various stages. This is necessary to ensure the success of any project. You should have information about the performance of the rankings. The customer satisfaction is also an important aspect. Maintaining deadlines is very important. All these aspects can be of great concern to the SEO agency.

One way of managing all these aspects together is by creating a Heatmap in either MS Excel or Google Sheets. The agency can assign individual ranks for each of these values. The manager can affix 1 for ‘Good’, 2 for ‘Needs a re-look’, and 3 for ‘bestowing immediate attention’. Alternately, he can color them in different shades with ‘Red’ denoting the items that require urgent attention.

This is one of the best ways of analyzing things before preparing the final report and dispatching it to the client. The red areas or the one marked ‘3’ necessitates urgent communication with the client. You might need the approval of the client under such circumstances. The Heatmap is thus very useful to increase efficiency.

4. Storing the files is of great importance

When you are working on a particular SEO project, there will arise occasions where you might have to share files and folders with other members of your team. You can use Google Drive to save these documents from where anybody with the right credentials will be able to retrieve them at any time. Dropbox is also a similar tool where you can share files and folders with others.

This will enable different people to work on these documents at various times. They can share the final output with you for approval before you prepare the final report and share it with your client.

Dropbox comes with a free and a premium account. Naturally, the premium account has more facilities like higher storage capacity, and so on. Dropbox is one of the best options available for ensuring collaboration of the highest order between different members of the team.

5. Tracking your tasks is part of your follow-up activities

Every project consists of many individual tasks. It is always a great idea to break any project into small doable tasks. This can help you keep track of the entire project perfectly. You will not miss out on any detail. In addition, small doable tasks do not look daunting.

Any SEO project has various tasks like blogs, graphics, link acquisitions, and so on. You need to ensure proper follow-up of such tasks. One of the best tools that help you in this regard is Basecamp.

Basecamp is the favorite project management system in the market today because of its ability to break down and assign individual tasks to various team members. The system allows you to have discussions with each individual. Inviting other team members and clients as well to collaborate on specific projects becomes easy.

Another favorite PMS is Trello. This is a free tool having excellent ability to track multiple tasks at the same time. The best part of using Trello is that you can work on various projects at the same time without losing track of the project.

6. Manage your goals better

When you handle multiple projects at a time, there are always chances of missing out on a few goals. This can happen to the best of agencies. However, you can overcome this issue by listing out each of your goals separately.

Break down each of these goals into smaller ones. Share it with the different members of your team. Celebrate the achievement of each goal with your team. This will encourage your team to work better.

In this way, your team members will remind you of the goals in case you miss out on any of them. This is the beauty of team member. Hence, carrying each team member with you is the right way to manage your goals better.

7. Having regular meetings with your team keeps them on their toes

Having meetings with your team members at regular intervals sends out the news you are following the matter very carefully. This will keep them on their toes. They will be ready with their assignments. You will be able to review each member’s performance and take the requisite action wherever necessary.

The purpose of these meetings is not only to review the performance of your team but also chalk out future plans of action. This brings a sense of responsibility on the team member as he or she feels they are part of the action. They become more open with their views. As a manager, you should have an open mind and listen to their views. They can be very useful at times.

8. Giving updates to the clients regularly is essential

You should use these meetings to apprise the customer about the steps you propose to take in the next month. You might achieve your targets. Many a time you might fail as well. You should use these meetings to explain the reasons for your success and your failures as well. This builds up the trust factor. Trust is of utmost importance in any relationship.

The clients have a right to know the latest happenings. It is your duty to apprise them of the status of the client’s projects. You should hold monthly meetings with your clients where you can share information about the various reports that your team generates throughout the month.

Having meetings with your employees and members of your team is essential. Similarly, holding regular meetings with your different clients helps you to apprise them of the status of their projects.

These reports indicate how the project is moving. You get to know the shortcomings of the project. Discussing these aspects with your customer is important because you need his explicit permission to tweak the project. This could involve some additional costs at times. The customer should agree to pay. Especially if these tasks are out of the purview of the original proposal and contract.

9. SEO tools can be of great help to you in times of need

As a SEO agency owner, you are aware of the importance of SEO tools. These tools can be of great use to you in all projects you handle. Some of them are as follows.

Tribe Local – This is one of the most useful citation websites that help in maintaining the consistency of your citations. This is a multi-purpose tool that can help with your SEO audits as well.

Google Alerts – Monitoring the brand value of your client website is possible with this tool.

Raven Tools – This tool is very useful in determining the social media engagement rates. These multipurpose tools also help you in advertising content and SEO campaign management.

Screaming Frog – You need crawlers to check out the efficiency of your keywords.

Open Site Explorer – Backlinks are very important for the success of any website. They help the website to rank high on the SERP. This tool helps in determining the genuineness and health of your backlinks

Rank Checker – You require this tool to determine the ranking of your client’s website.

10. Customer satisfaction is the key:

Every act of your agency should work towards satisfying the customer. One satisfied customer can bring in another and thus the chain continues..

You should also have negotiation skills to bargain for more time and money from your customers if the need arises. However, everything depends on the relations you maintain with your customers and team members.

You might have to don various hats in the process. You have to be a leader for your team and guide them in the right way. Sometimes, you have to act as a friend of your team members to encourage them and work along with them.

You do you hard work for your SEO agency. However, satisfying the customer is the most important aspect of any assignment. Your efforts at managing the SEO agency should center on the customer satisfaction aspect.

Conclusion

You have seen 10 simple tips that should help you manage multiple projects for your SEO agency at the same time. The best part of the job is that you should enjoy doing it. Automatically, you end up successful.